5
Clarisse looked up at him with her heart in her eyes. “Yes,” she confessed. “I knew you were experienced. Everybody did, in our circle of friends. You had women and threw them away.”
He grimaced. “Yes, I did.” He drew in a heavy, rough breath. “I thought men did that, I thought it was how a man was supposed to behave. K.C. was furious with me. He said that I was taking terrible chances with my health, and that what I was doing would come back to haunt me one day.” He shrugged. “I didn’t believe him, of course. And I was ticked at him, because he interfered so much in my life. My parents had been dead since I was ten years old. I’d lived in an orphanage and been on my own for a good while by then. K.C. had been out of the country when my mother was killed. But he came back a few months later. He took me out of the orphanage, looked out for me, took me in, was responsible for me until I was of legal age. But I thought that nobody except a blood parent should presume to lecture me, and I told him so.” He shook his head. “God help me, I had no idea.” His expression was full of remorse. “Yes, I had women,” he said. “But it would never have been like that with you, especially at your age. You were only seventeen, honey.”
“You weren’t going to stop,” she whispered.
“I couldn’t stop!” he returned. His face was rigid as his pale brown eye searched both of hers. “It had never been that way with a woman. Never! Even now, I go crazy when I remember how it felt.” His eye closed and he shuddered. “Eight damned long years I went without you because of a lie. I could kill someone...!”
“Stanton!” Her hand reached up and hesitated at his cheek.
He felt the heat of it and opened his eye. He winced as he recalled what he’d said to her at the airport, the last time they’d met before the awards ceremony. He knew why she was reluctant to touch him.
“I lied, baby,” he said softly, drawing her palm to his mouth. “I want your touch. I ache for it!”
Her cold fingers touched his hard cheek, moving up to just under the eye patch, where a small scar ran vertically from under it.
“It’s still pretty messy under that, despite the surgery,” he said stiffly.
She looked up into his face. “I saw it when you were recovering. It didn’t bother me, except that it hurt me to see how much pain it caused you.”
He frowned.
“I expect,” she said, averting her gaze, “that you’ve never taken it off with a woman when you...”
He was rigid.
“Sorry,” she said, and started to remove her hand.
He clasped it to his cheek. “Look at me,” he said huskily.
She looked up again.
His face was taut, his eye blazing with feeling. He wanted to tell her then, how long it had been since he’d had a woman. He wanted to make her understand what devastation the lie had caused him. But it would serve no purpose now except to hurt her. She’d been hurt enough already.
“You’re still the most beautiful woman I’ve ever known,” he said in a soft, deep voice.
“I have scars...”
“So do I,” he replied. “I let you see them, the night I got drunk.”
She flushed and averted her eyes.
“You can’t imagine how it feels to me,” he whispered roughly. “To know that you’ve never done it with a man.” He laughed shortly. “You thought I had malaria because I was shaking when I had you in my arms. I was shaking because I want you to the point of absolute madness. I can just look at you and get hard enough to put it through a damned tree trunk...!” She flushed. He groaned and averted his gaze. “Sorry,” he bit off. “I’m really sorry. That was crude, even for me.”
“But that’s, I mean, it’s natural with men,” she faltered.
He let out a breath and moved a step closer. He caught her shoulders and leaned his forehead against hers. “No. It’s not. It isn’t like that for me, with anyone except you.”
She frowned. “I don’t understand.”
His eye closed. He drank in the scent of her body. “You give me peace,” he whispered. “The only time I’ve ever known it is when I’m close to you.” He laughed softly. “And that’s surprising, Tat, because you shake me up, too.”
She let out a sigh. He drew her completely against him and stood just holding her, his forehead touching hers, his coffee-scented breath on her mouth.
“You don’t trust me,” he murmured quietly.
Her heart jumped. “Stanton...”
His cheek slid against hers. “I can’t hide how much I want you,” he whispered. “But I give you my word that I absolutely will not touch you with intent until and unless you ask me to.”
She drew back. He was serious. There was no teasing light in that one pale brown eye, watching her so intently.
She drew in a breath. She swallowed. “Okay,” she said finally.
He kissed her eyelids. “Let’s go see the street performers.” He took her hand, linked her fingers with his, and drew her along the path toward the exit.
* * *
There were street performers downtown. One had a guitar and he sang like an angel. Rourke and Clarisse sat on a bench, enjoying the sound of his deep voice as he crooned a love song in Spanish.
Rourke’s fingers smoothed over hers. “Lost love,” he mused when the last notes of the song faded slowly away. “So many songs have been written about it. Nothing quite captures the pathos, though.”
“Sometimes things don’t work out for people,” she said noncommittally.
He looked down at her. “And sometimes they do.”
Her eyes searched his. “You’re not a marrying man, Stanton,” she said quietly. “At the end of the day, that’s the bare truth. And I don’t play around.”
“I know that.”
She averted her gaze to people passing by.
“You used him.”
Her head came up, shocked.
His expression was quiet. Intent. “You needed some way to keep me at arm’s length. Carvajal was it. You think I’ll keep my distance because you’re engaged.”
She didn’t quite know what to say. He looked odd.
“You don’t know how it is with me, Tat,” he said softly. He smiled gently. “I’ve gone hungry for years, and I’m sitting next to a banquet. Do you really think even an engagement is going to continue to keep me at bay?”
“You respect a binding relationship...”
“I would if you loved him. You don’t.” He searched her wide, wounded eyes. “You love me, Tat. You’ve loved me at least since you were seventeen. Maybe even longer. It’s the only reason you’d ever have let me touch you the way I did, that Christmas Eve so long ago.”
Her cheeks flushed. She wanted to deny it. She couldn’t.
His chest swelled with pride. He’d been guessing, hoping. Now he knew the truth. It made the world bright and beautiful. She belonged to him.
His fingers slid sensually around hers, lightly touching, exploring. The way he smiled at her then wasn’t smug or arrogant. It was with a tenderness she’d rarely seen in him.
“We know so much about each other,” he said softly. “Things we never share with other people.” He looked down at her soft hand. “You know how my parents died.” His face tautened. “I never talk about it.”
“You told me a lot of things, when you lost your eye,” she recalled. Her fingers slid in between his and closed on them. “You’ve had such a hard life, Stanton.”
He drew in a breath. “It made me the man I am,” he replied. “K.C. was good to me, but I resented what people said about him. I loved my mother and the man I thought was my father. I didn’t like having them gossiped about.”
“Not that many people gossiped,” she replied. “They were too afraid of K.C.”
“He’s still formidable,” he mused. “My old man.” He shook his head. “I used to live for him to come home, so he could tell me about the things he did, the places he saw. He knew all sorts of people, in dangerous places. I dined out on adventure tales.”
“You lived them, too,” she recalled.
“Ya, with an ammunition belt strapped around my chest, carrying an AK-47 when I was just ten years old. I went into battle with the insurgents. K.C. was horrified. He was still active in those years, off from one little war to another, leading men into battle. But he couldn’t believe I’d been rash enough to sign on with a bunch of mercs.” He laughed. “He was furious. He dragged me back to Kenya and formally became my guardian. I didn’t have much say in the matter, at that age. I resented him, for a long time. You see, I loved my mother,” he added quietly. “And my father. I hated the insinuation that my mother was a loose woman.”
“She loved K.C.,” she reminded him. “That didn’t make her a loose woman. I don’t think she could help it. He loved another woman and lost her to the church.”
“Ya. Got drunk and my mother felt sorry for him. And here I am.” His fingers tightened around hers.
“People pay for mistakes, Stanton,” she said softly, tugging at the hard pressure of his strong hand around hers.
“Sorry, love,” he said, loosening his hold at once. “Bad memories.”
“I know.”
He looked up at her. “You never left me, while they fought to save my eye,” he recalled. “You made me fight.”
“You’d never have given up, even if I’d gone home,” she said with a sad smile. “Anita would have been there...”
He put his fingers over her mouth. “She was just a friend,” he said. “I never slept with her.”
Her high cheekbones colored.
“I wanted you,” he whispered roughly. “If you’d stayed around when they let me go home, I would have...” He bit down on the words and averted his face. “I couldn’t risk it. I had to make you leave.”
She swallowed down the pain. “I wish...you’d told me.”
“I couldn’t. It was my burden.”
“It was mine, too. It would have made it easier...” Her voice broke on the word.
He stood up, tugging her with him.
She could barely see where she was going for the tears. He didn’t speak. He just walked, faster, until they reached the car.
He put her inside, started it and drove back to her house in a silence alive with tension.
When they got to the front porch, he picked her up in his arms and carried her to the door.
“Unlock it,” he said through his teeth.
She fumbled the key out of her pocket and opened the door. He retrieved the key, relocked the door and carried her straight toward the bedroom.
“Stanton...no,” she choked.
He was blind, deaf, dumb, so overcome with his hunger that he couldn’t even think. He placed her onto the coverlet of the big bed and went to lock the door. He leaned his forehead against it, shuddering.
Clarisse, watching him, was stunned.
“I gave you my word,” he choked. “I’m trying...damned hard...to keep it. I really am.”
She sat up in the bed, staring at him with faint surprise. “I don’t understand,” she whispered. “I don’t understand, Stanton.”
He turned and moved toward the bed. He stopped beside it. His face was almost chalk white as he looked down at her. His tall, powerful body was shivering with desire.
“Tat,” he said in a haunted tone, “I haven’t had a woman...in eight years.”
The enormity of the confession shocked her speechless. She stared at him with wide blue eyes, her lips parted as she tried to breathe normally.
“Eight...no,” she faltered. “No, it isn’t possible...!”
“You haven’t had a man,” he said roughly. “Why isn’t it possible?”
“Eight years...!” she said unsteadily.
“I can’t do it with anyone else,” he said harshly.
All her protests were quite suddenly gone. She could see the raging arousal that he made no effort to hide. She could see the tension in his tall, powerful body, the anguish that drew his face taut with pain.
She lay back on the bed, her hands beside her head on the pillow. She just looked at him with quiet, soft blue eyes. He’d robbed her of the last defense she had with that confession.
His gaze went from her head down her body, over the taut nipples that showed under her blouse, down her long legs to her small feet in strappy sandals. She was the most beautiful creature he’d ever seen in his life.
“I don’t have anything to use,” he said unsteadily. “But even if I did, I wouldn’t want to use it,” he added. “I want, very badly, to make you pregnant with my baby.”
She gasped. Her body reacted to the words by arching, shivering.
“You want it, too,” he said, surprised.
“I want it...more than anything in the world,” she stammered, and flushed.
He slipped out of his shoes, unfastened his belt and tossed it to one side. His big hands were unsteady as he flicked at buttons and stripped himself out of the silk shirt. He unzipped his trousers and stepped out of them, letting her watch.
He was so aroused that it was impossible to look anywhere else.
“Try not to look at that for a few seconds,” he said with graveyard humor as he sat down beside her on the bed, “or I’ll explode before I can even get inside you.”
She was watching him like some elegant little cat, her eyes wide and soft and curious on his face as he began to undress her.
“Just...from looking?” she whispered.
“Just from looking.”
“Gosh.”
He eased her out of the blouse and bra and sat gazing at her beautiful little breasts. He touched the scars tenderly and winced. “I would have given my life to spare you that pain,” he whispered.
She moved restlessly on the cover as he unfastened her slacks and pulled them, and her lacy pink briefs, down her legs and tossed them aside.
“Will it...hurt?” she asked huskily.
“It may,” he said quietly. “But you won’t notice.”
Her eyes were opening even wider.
He smiled gently. “You have no idea, do you?” he asked, his voice tender and slow. “None at all.”
“Well, I remember...what it’s like, a little,” she replied.
He nodded, recalling the torrid interlude her mother had interrupted. His hand went to her soft thigh and touched it, traced it, hearing her breath catch. His fingers moved up, teasing at her hip, across her flat belly, up to her taut breasts. He touched the hard tip, very gently. She arched up to tempt his hand closer.
He traced around the tender flesh, feeling her shiver.
“I don’t...even know what to do,” she wept.
“I’m going to teach you that.” He slid alongside her, drawing her gently onto her side so that they were facing each other. He pulled her close, so that her hard-tipped breasts buried themselves in the thick hair over the hard muscles of his chest. He caught his breath at the exquisite sensation.
“Be still, love,” he whispered, shivering at the contact. “This first time, I have to be very careful. You mustn’t knock me off balance. All right?”
“All right, Stanton,” she managed unsteadily.
His mouth touched around hers, teasing the bottom lip away from the upper one. All the while, his hands were smoothing her hips against the hard thrust of him.
“I’ve dreamed of this,” he said in a husky, deep tone. “Years and years of dreams.”
“So have I.”
He lifted her into a more intimate position and heard her soft gasp as he paused at the soft moist veil of her. His mouth traced her lips, teasing them to open. His lips closed on them, hungry and hard. She moaned.
“Don’t close your eyes when I go into you, Tat,” he whispered unsteadily. “Let me watch. All right?”
She shivered as she felt him moving hungrily against her. “All...all right.”
His hand slid down her soft body, to the most tender place of all, and he began to touch her.
She shivered again, her lips falling apart in a soundless gasp as her body shuddered with pleasure she’d never experienced.
“I’d like to take hours with you,” he breathed against her mouth. “But I’m too aroused. I have to make you hungry enough, quickly enough, before I lose control.”
Her eyes opened like saucers as he started inside her.
He had to bite back a laugh at the shock he saw there. “Now you know, honey,” he whispered. “This is what happens.”
“It’s...very...” She swallowed, lost for words to describe what he was doing to her. It was slow and sweet and very intimate. She stiffened, but his fingers moved, caressing away the faint stab of pain, making her wild, making her hungry.
His hand flattened at the base of her spine and pulled her, positioned her, as one hair-roughened leg went between both of hers and he pushed harder.
She cried out. But she was pushing toward him, not pulling away. Her eyes began to dilate. He felt her body, warm and soft, accepting the slow, soft invasion of his, moving with him, moving toward him.
His teeth ground together and he shuddered. “Dear... God!” he cried out, gasping for breath as he saw her eyes go almost black.
“Stanton...?” Was that her voice, that high-pitched almost-unrecognizable whisper of sound.
“My darling,” he groaned. He rolled her onto her back and moved between her long, soft legs. His powerful body strained down toward hers. He shuddered with each motion of his hips, his face contorted with the anguish off desire. “My darling,” he whispered huskily. “Oh, God, baby, baby, baby...!” He ground out the words with each movement of his body on hers. His voice broke with the violence of it, his hips grinding down into hers with hard, quick, stabbing thrusts. He lifted his chest. “Look. Look down...!” he bit off. “Watch!”
Her eyes slid down to the hardness of him, the muscles rippling over his chest, down his flat stomach, to the intense motion of his body as it plunged inside hers.
Her nails stabbed into his upper arms as he drove into her, almost sobbing with the pleasure as it grew and grew.
“Stanton!” she cried out, feeling her whole body go so taut that she thought she might tear apart under him as the heat began to explode in her.
“Oh, God... I love you,” he whispered hoarsely. “I love you...more than my own life...!”
She arched up, shuddering with delight as the heat burst and exploded into shards of pleasure so great she thought she might die.
He looked into her eyes and watched, overcome with joy as he convulsed over and over again, giving himself to the incredible climax, letting her see, letting her watch.
He cried out finally as the pleasure almost tore him in two. He arched down into her with his last breath of will, feeling his body shatter, his hips tense until it was almost painful, as he endured the sweet agony of satisfaction.
She held him, savored his warm, damp weight on her body, loved him, in the aftermath of something she’d never dreamed she could ever feel.
“Oh...my goodness,” she choked at his ear.
“That, by God, was an orgasm,” he said heavily, his voice drowsy in the aftermath. “A real, honest-to-God orgasm. I’ve never had one in my life.”
“Oh.”
He lifted his head and looked down into her soft, loving blue eyes, with wonder. “I thought I’d never be able to have you,” he whispered. “It was hell. Pure hell.” He traced her soft mouth with fingers that weren’t quite steady. “I wanted to take a lot longer, our first time. I was so aroused, I couldn’t manage it. I’m sorry.”
“Sorry!” She shivered. “I thought I was going to die,” she whispered, her eyes searching his with wonder. “I never believed women felt the things I read about. It was...it was...” She searched for words and couldn’t find any.
He bent and brushed his mouth tenderly over her eyes. “It was almost sacred,” he whispered. “I thought about making a baby while we did it.”
“So did I,” she whispered.
He let out a long sigh and relaxed. “Am I too heavy, darling?”
“No. I love the way it feels.”
“So do I.”
Her arms slid under his, holding him to her. They were still intimately joined. She closed her eyes. She felt him draw in a long breath. Incredibly, they fell asleep.
* * *
She smelled coffee. She opened her eyes and Rourke was sitting beside her, wearing just his slacks, holding a cup of coffee under her nose.
He smiled tenderly. She smiled back.
“I made eggs and bacon,” he said. “Burned the toast.”
“I don’t care.”
His eyes slid over her nudity. “You are much more beautiful than Venus, my love,” he said quietly. “And I love you quite madly. More than ever after what we did.”
“Me, too.”
He let her hold the coffee and sip it while his hands cupped her breasts. “Beautiful,” he said softly.
She laughed softly.
He let go of her and stood up, reaching for his jacket. He pulled a jeweler’s box out of the pocket and opened it.
“Here.” He took the coffee cup and put it on the bedside table. He slid an emerald-and-diamond ring onto the third finger of her left hand. He kissed it. “That will have to do for an engagement ring. We’ll have something to eat and start the paperwork. I’d like to marry you in church, if we can manage it.”
“Marry me?”
“Of course,” he said simply.
She could barely believe it. She looked at him with her heart in her eyes. Tears stung them.
“I told you I loved you, while I was making love to you,” he reminded her with a slow, sweet kiss. “Did you think I said it because I was out of my mind with desire?”
“Yes,” she confessed.
He chuckled. “I love you more than my life, Tat,” he said, searching her eyes. “I’ll never stop.”
She let the tears fall. “I’ve loved you all my life, Stanton,” she whispered. “Even when you hated me...”
He caught her up close and kissed her with all the years of hunger in his hard mouth. “I loved you, and I thought I hadn’t the right,” he ground out as he buried his face in her throat. “Loved you hopelessly, deathlessly, wanted to die because I couldn’t have you. For eight long, damned, endless years...!” His mouth slid onto hers, hard and hungry. “But I’ve got you now, and I’ll never let go. Never!”
Her arms tightened around his neck. She held him, shivered against him. “Maybe I’m dreaming,” she managed tearfully.
“Maybe you’re not.”
He moved away, but only to unfasten his slacks and throw them aside. He was even more aroused than he had been the night before.
She caught her breath as she looked at him.
He sat up against the headboard and pulled her gently over his hips.
“What...are you doing?” she asked with a gasp.
He chuckled wickedly. “Teaching new concepts of pleasure?” He moved her against him and caught his breath. “I can go deeper this way, love,” he whispered, loving the way she blushed.
“Oh.”
“Much deeper.”
“Oh!” That exclamation wasn’t an answer to his teasing remark. It was an expression of pleasure so sweeping that it was accompanied by the ripple of her entire body in his arms as she arched and pushed down helplessly.
“Yes,” he ground out. “Yes, yes...!”
He dragged her down onto him, loving the way she clung to him, loving the way her body melted into his, the way she sobbed as he carried her far beyond the pleasure she’d felt their first time, into heights that she’d never dreamed could exist.
He was over her then, under her, all around her as they went from one side of the bed to the other in such a heat of need that even when the climax came, it wasn’t enough. He was insatiable. It was dark when he could finally lift away from her.
* * *
They ate in silence. She was in his lap, wearing a gown. He was in his slacks and nothing else.
She couldn’t bear to stop touching him. Every time her eyes met his, the love in them almost blinded him.
He fed her eggs and bacon, fresh ones that he’d just cooked, his one good eye loving her all the while.
“Nothing in my life was ever like this,” he said softly. “Even in my misspent youth, I wasn’t able to feel what I feel with you.”
She flushed a little with pride and embarrassment. She opened her mouth as he coaxed another bite of scrambled eggs into her mouth.
He looked down at her with an odd expression. There was deep affection, hunger, but something else, something much deeper there.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” she asked softly.
“I keep having this damned weird dream,” he said in a subdued tone. “Stupid, I know. You’re crying, and pregnant, and I can’t get to you...”
“Nightmares never make much sense,” she interrupted. Her fingers went to the thick hair at his temple and savored its coolness.
“I suppose not.” He laughed. “Domingo’s got me being superstitious now. Maybe I shouldn’t have cut my hair,” he added with a grin.
She laughed, too. “I like the way you look. I sort of miss the ponytail, though,” she confessed.
He fed her the last of the bacon and held the coffee cup to her lips. “It belonged to the old, wild life,” he said simply. “The haircut is a statement of intent, in case you didn’t notice,” he said. “I’m showing you that things have changed.” His face became somber as he searched her soft, loving eyes. “I’m almost thirty-one, Tat. I’ve lived hard, and I’ve worked in dangerous professions most of my life. But for the first time, I want a family, a home.”
“With me?” she asked.
“Of course with you.” He smiled gently. “I’ve never tried to make a woman pregnant in my life, you know,” he added on a chuckle.
Her high cheekbones colored.
“What would you like to do today?” he asked when she finished the coffee.
“Anything you would,” she replied. Her fingers reached up to touch his hard face, stroking down to his sensuous mouth.
“Anything?” he teased softly.
She laughed. “Well, I’m just a little...uncomfortable,” she said delicately.
“I went at it hard and fast,” he sighed. “I was so desperate for you, honey. I should have taken longer, both times.”
“I didn’t mind,” she confessed.
He nuzzled his nose against hers. “Let’s go shopping.”
“Shopping?”
He nodded. “For a wedding gown. There are plenty of couture shops in Manaus. I want you to have a gown that we can hand down, if we have a daughter.”
“An heirloom,” she said huskily.
“Exactly. Like that ring.” He brought her hand to his mouth and kissed it, where the ring sparkled. “My mother never took it off. It’s the most precious heirloom I own.”
“I’ll take wonderful care of it,” she promised.
“I know that.” He drew in a long breath and smiled wickedly as his hand went to the buttons of his shirt that she was wearing.
She colored prettily. “Stanton...” she began nervously.
“I just want to look at you, baby,” he whispered, nuzzling her nose with his. “You have to understand, this is like candy to me. I’ve gone without sweets for years, and now I’m in a lovely candy store with unlimited stock.”
Her eyes softened even more. “I like looking at you, too,” she whispered, smoothing one small hand against his bare chest.
“I noticed.” He bent and brushed his mouth over her taut breasts. “It’s like kissing rose petals,” he whispered.
She arched up toward his mouth, denying him nothing. It felt so incredibly good, to be with him like this, to feel him wanting her, to know how he really felt about her. It was like a dream that came suddenly to life.
“You really...don’t mind the scars, do you?” she asked when he lifted his head and his one good eye lingered where she’d been cut.
“I mind how it happened. I mind that I wasn’t there to protect you from that animal,” he confessed quietly.
Her fingers smoothed over his hard mouth, tracing the sensual curve of it. She was bereft of words, her feelings for him ran so high.
His mouth lowered to her breast and he kissed the scars, running his tongue delicately along them. She held his head to her, her fingers feeling the tension of the band that held the eye patch in place.
She started to slide it off. He caught her wrist, his good eye blazing with conflicting emotions.
“You silly man,” she said softly, brushing his hand aside. “As if it matters to me. Shame on you.”
With his jaw taut, his teeth clenched, he allowed her to remove the eye patch. She studied the mutilated socket, where his eye had been. There were scars there, too. He could have worn a glass eye, but he’d always refused the artificiality.
With a gentle sigh, she drew his head down and kissed the scars.
“God!” he exclaimed, torn with emotion. He caught her mouth under his and kissed her so hungrily that she gasped. It went on for a long time, as he tried to express an emotion so powerful that even words were inadequate to describe it.
He hugged her close, his mouth sliding down to her neck, to press there hungrily. “I’ve never let anyone look at it. Not even K.C.”
“But you’ll let me, my darling,” she whispered against his temple, smoothing her lips over the tanned skin.
“I’d let you do anything to me,” he said, his voice husky.
“That goes double for me.”
He enveloped her against him, holding her, comforting her, feeling safe as he’d never felt safe in his life before. It was like coming home. His eye closed as he buried his face in her soft throat, rocked her against him, her bare breasts pressing hard into the warm muscle and thick hair of his broad chest.
“I love you so much,” she whispered, almost in anguish. “If I lost you now...!”
“You won’t lose me,” he said gruffly. “I’ll never let you go now, Tat. You belong to me.”
“Yes. And you belong to me,” she whispered back.
He tilted her face up to his, studying the rapt expression on it with pure wonder. He smiled tenderly as he traced the exquisite lines of her beautiful face, looked into her deep, china-blue eyes.
He looked strange, suddenly, as if he’d landed in an unfamiliar place and couldn’t get his bearings. After a minute, he smiled a little remotely, and buttoned up the shirt, hiding her pretty breasts again.
“Let’s go and visit the museum. You game?”
She laughed softly. His mood seemed to lighten. “Okay.” She got off his lap. “I won’t be a minute.”
“I’ll wait.”
He watched her go with a terrible sense of foreboding. He didn’t really have psychic abilities, but he was sensitive to mood and place and situation. It was a gift that had saved his life more than once. He didn’t know exactly what he was feeling, but it frightened him. Something was going to happen, something perhaps life-threatening. He couldn’t blurt that out in front of Tat, but he was going to be more watchful, at least for a while.
On the other hand, he was happier than he’d ever been in his life. Tat was going to marry him. He’d get to keep her forever. They’d have children; they’d make a home together. Odd, he thought, that freedom had been almost a religion to him until he’d known for sure that Tat wasn’t related to him in any way. Once he was sure of that, he couldn’t wait to put his ring on her finger. Maybe it was too soon for children, but he wanted those, too. So did she.
He smiled warmly, thinking about a little boy or a little girl in his arms, in Tat’s arms. His parents had died brutally, when he was very young. He’d never known a settled family even so, because the man he thought was his father had been away with K.C. very often on missions overseas. His mother had loved him; she’d been kind to him. But after her death, and her husband’s, Rourke had been left alone in the world at the age of ten. His children, he thought, were going to have both parents and a settled life.
That would mean making some changes in his own life. No more dangerous missions. He’d have to go administrative, like K.C. But he could make that sacrifice, just as he was certain that Tat wouldn’t take the risk of going into combat zones as a reporter anymore.
It would be worth it, he thought, it would be worth anything to have Tat permanently in his life, in his arms. He was, he considered, the luckiest man on earth right now.